The overarching goal of systems biology is to understand how all of the individual small molecules which make up cells (and thus organisms) work together to create the an overall phenotype. A huge step forward in this field has come with the first “entire cell” simulation – a program which predicts the phenotype of a cell in different internal states. This work was done by a collaboration between scientists at Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute. This initial simulation is for one of the simplest cells possible – but it is nonetheless a huge step towards the goals of systems biology made possible by rapidly improving computer speeds.
Read more in a New York Times article here. Or read the original paper here.
